The Kenya National Theatre (KNT), was recently reopened after undergoing a Sh100-million refurbishment, thanks to Kenya Breweries Limited. Restoring KNT to its former glory was part of the Kenya@50 legacy projects to mark half a decade of independence.

KNT is also known as the ‘Shrine of Tears'. The late playwright Francis Imbuga published an eponymous novel in 1993 about the role of theatre in the dissemination of cultural values. KNT was so nicknamed for the mixed bag of fortunes that come to those who call it home.

There have been many memorable plays performed at KNT, including Francis Imbuga’s, Betrayal in the City that opened to capacity crowds when it was picked as one of the two plays to represent Kenya during the African Festival of Arts and Culture (Festac) in 1977 in Lagos, Nigeria.

The other play was Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. It was interesting that Ngugi (one of the earliest directors of the University of Nairobi’s Free Travelling Theatre when it was founded in 1974) and Micere Mugo attended the reopening. Same as Kimathi’s widow! Betraya in the City and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi were the ‘canon of Kenyan drama’ with the latter being symbolically staged on October 20, 1977 to mark 25 years since the declaration of the State of Emergency.

Betrayal in the City, on the other hand, had memorable characters like Jusper Wendo, Jere, Mulili and Mosese who issued the memorable lines: “It was better while we waited. Now we have nothing to look forward to. We have killed our past and are busy killing the future.”

Betrayal in the City, much of it written inside bars when the inspiration struck, later became a school set book. But did you know the idea of the Kenya National Theatre was hatched by Sir Philip Mitchell in 1947 when he was the Governor of Kenya, as Richard Frost notes in Enigmatic Proconsul: Sir Philip Mitchell and the Twilight of the Empire, published in 1992.

Frost was the British Council guy in charge of the Kenya Cultural Centre project of which KNT, the first of its kind in the colonial empire, was to be part to bring together those interested in music, drama and the arts. £50,000 (Sh7 million at current exchange rates) was donated by the Secretary of State in 1948.

KNT was officially opened in November 1952 by Sir Ralph Richardson, but it mostly was a conveyor of British cultural performances. It was meant for the ‘cultured society’ and miros were excluded by the ‘snob’ location, where it still stands on Harry Thuku Road. Indeed, it wasn’t until 16 years later that the first African director of KNT, Seth Adagala, was appointed, and later pioneered the defunct National Theatre Drama School.